Leave the Light On
by dashinginconverse
Summary: As a Reaper, Paige is supposed to guide souls to the afterlife, never interfering with their intended path. However, this becomes remarkably difficult when she encounters her next charge, Seth Rollins - a man who very much wants to die, and a man who she very much wants to save. RollinsPaige, plus others, AU
1. The Job of Death

_**Disclaimer: **__I don't own anything._

_**Summary: As a Reaper, Paige is supposed to guide souls to the afterlife, never interfering with their intended path. However, this becomes remarkably difficult when she encounters her next charge, Seth Rollins - a man who very much wants to die, and a man who she very much wants to save. RollinsPaige, plus others, AU**_

_So, this idea suddenly attacked me out of no where, and I couldn't stop myself from writing it. I've started to adore the SethPaige pairing and this is my first chapter fic with the two of them as a main focus. I'm really excited about this fic. Paige's role is kind of based on this anime that I am very fond of - Yu Yu Hakusho, if anyone's interested - but everything else is completely different. Anyway, I do hope that y'all enjoy this new fic of mine. I know I probably shouldn't be starting a new one, but I couldn't help myself. It's October and I felt that this was an appropriate little fic to start now, considering the supernatural elements in it. Please enjoy! _

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**Leave the Light On**  
**Chapter One: The Job of Death**

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The night was inky black, so dark and foggy that not even the brightest of street lamps could pierce it. The garb she wore was even darker - rich black, billowing robes that flowed with even the slightest breeze. When the first people drew their images of Death, they pictured the figure as a skeleton, cloaked in darkness, with a wickedly curved scythe. _They had only gotten one of those details correct,_ Paige mused; however, she was as pale as a bleached skull, so maybe the stereotypical image was slightly more accurate in her case.

The woman floated in the darkness, stories high in the sky, eye-level with an apartment. She needn't worry about being seen. Only others of her kind could see her, and even then, they rarely spoke. She could call only a few of her brethren a friend, and that was being generous. But that was neither here nor there, and she was here to do a job.

Paige ran a hand through her inky-colored hair. It hung down her back, long and tangled, her equally dark eyes stared in front of her, looking intently at the window.

A few drops of rain pattered against the glass, but fell right through her. That was one perk of being dead, she supposed. The rain began softly, but then picked up in intensity, as if knowing that something was broiling inside the apartment she gazed so intently at.

She had been told that the latest person she had to bring to the Other Side was in that apartment, that he would die at exactly 12:16 this morning - no earlier, no later, it was set in stone - by his own hand, by a bullet through his skull. They had even told her the make and model of the gun, but she did not remember. Death was death, and death was especially sad when it was wrought by one's own had. She could attest to that.

So here she stood, at exactly 12:00 midnight, waiting for what would inevitably come - a sound, muffled by the storm outside, but a sound nonetheless. The sound of a gunshot, with all the finality of the weapon itself.

Paige scratched the back of her head, her fingers raking roughly through her mass of dark hair. The curtains were pulled back from the window, showing a man pacing back and forth, half his hair light, the other half dark. He was thin, well-built, and with a pair of brown eyes that were as troubled as she had ever seen a man's. He ran his own slender fingers through his hair, tangling them, before ripping them away and throwing his head back. Due to her heightened senses, Paige could hear a slight growl rumbling from his chest, even through the layers of brick that separated them.

"The wait is the worst," a voice said from behind her.

Paige did not start at the sound. Instead, she turned slowly, focusing her stare on the other Reaper that had decided to make himself known.

"Roman," she addressed, curtly.

A smile broke across his face. A genuine one. Seeing a smile on a Reaper would never not be jarring, but Roman smiled nonetheless. He was happier when he was alive, she had heard, but that happiness had been taken from him, as it had from all of the ones who were Reapers.

"No need to be so formal," he said, raising a hand in defense, as if she would hurt him. In reality, Roman was one of the few she could call _friend_, and he knew this.

Paige lifted a thin shoulder in a shrug. "Sorry. I have been waiting here for the longest time and I seemed to have forgotten my courtesies."

Roman scoffed. "You always seem to _forget your courtesies_," he replied, doing his best to imitate her accent.

This earned a scoff from Paige, who said, "What are you doing here?"

"There was a house fire downtown," he said, and suddenly his voice was somber. "Two dead. Little girls."

Paige looked at him, biting her lip. She knew how much Roman adored children, knew the circumstances behind his death, and knew that the deaths of kids were the hardest for him to cope with. They were the hardest for anyone to cope with, really, but for Roman they always had a personal feel to them, for good reason. She hated that they always assigned him to bring children to the Other Side.

"I'm sorry," Paige said, and now she was sincere. "Come find me later, and we can - "

"Drink?" Roman said, a sadness-tinged smile curving his lips. "Yeah, I'd like that."

"Good," she said, as playfully as she could muster. "I plan on drinking you under the table."

"I'll believe it when I see it, baby girl," he said, and as soon as the term of endearment was out of his mouth, he gave a wink and then vanished, leaving Paige to her duties. His presence was immediately missed, however, as soon as she gazed back into the emptiness of the apartment in front of her.

The clock on the wall of the apartment read 12:15.

Things seemed to escalate in that moment. The man with the two-toned hair continued to pace, wiping frustrated tears away with his forearm. He was gone for a moment, and Paige wondered if she wouldn't have to witness this one. All of the death, no matter how much one may have been exposed to it, would wear on one's soul. And that counted doubly for Reapers.

But then the man was back, gun in hand, standing in the center of the room and facing the window. His eyes were closed and he gradually lifted the gun to his temple, finger on the trigger, breaths heaving shakily from his body. The man opened his eyes for what would be the last time - Paige wondered what he was looking for. The moon? The stars? Heaven?

His eyes seemed to meet hers - they were the softest brown she had ever seen, streaked with red, brimming with unshed tears, wide with fear. Paige tensed, a chill rolling down her spine. _Here it goes._

She was expecting a gunshot and the resulting splatter of blood and gore on the walls. However, what she was treated to was the sight of him lowering the gun from his head, the heavy steel weapon dropping from his fingers and landing on the thick carpet with a _thud_.

The man took a few steadying breaths and stepped away from the window, leaving the gun on the carpet and Paige with her mind spinning as if she had taken the shot for him.

It was 12:17 A.M., and Seth Rollins still lived.

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_**End Chapter One.**_


	2. Battling Demons

_**Disclaimer: **__I don't own anything._

_Oh my goodness, I totally didn't expect the reviews for the last chapter. I'm super excited about this story and it makes me that much more excited to write, knowing that people enjoyed the first chapter. I really hope that everyone likes this newest installment. Thanks so much for sticking with me! _

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**Leave the Light On**  
**Chapter Two: Battling Demons**

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Silence.

It was the utter quiet that was most unnerving, Paige found as she floated there, staring at the abyss in front of her as if it held every answer for every unasked question she had ever thought. The rain pounded relentlessly against the windows, and the man did not emerge from where he retreated.

However, the quiet around her was completely subverted by the pounding chaos that inhabited her thoughts. She could not quite pick out one thought from the other. Most of her thoughts were a jumble of words, mismatched and confusing and nonsense, all interspersed with the name of the man she had been charged with bringing to the Other Side.

_Seth Rollins._

Pale fingers clenched beneath the long sleeves of her cloak as the wind whipped her clothing around her thin frame. She so wanted to feel the pain in her palm, anything to snap her back into reality, but was unable to do so. Had been unable to do so for quite some time. She had never missed it until now.

Another thought, following his name like it belonged there.

_He's alive._

The dark-haired Reaper wrinkled her nose as she stared ahead, unseeing and yet seeing. She couldn't decide what to focus her gaze on - the way the rain pattered against the glass, the way the light streamed from under the door where he had disappeared, the way she wanted to feel the cold - to feel anything else other than the mind-numbing shock of what had just occurred.

This man, this Seth Rollins, the supposedly unremarkable human being, was supposed to take his life. It was written. There was no way to subvert it.

And yet, he did.

There it was, a cold chill shooting down her spine. For something she had wished for only moments earlier, she really regretted wanting to feel the ice pricks along her skin, itching their way beneath her muscle and lodging within the marrow of her bones.

Another thought, plucked out of the fray.

_What is going to happen now? What is going to happen to him?_

Really, Paige hadn't the faintest clue, as was evidenced by her slack-jawed expression. She continued to stare ahead, and was only interrupted when a sound from below jarred her back into reality.

It was him, again, briskly walking out of his apartment and into the night. Alive and breathing and moving about like nothing happened before. As if he hadn't nearly ended his life.

_Nearly._

Paige was not sure what this meant for him, or for her. She had never heard of anyone defying the odds like this before. She was sure of one thing, though. Seth Rollins was supposed to be dead. His living, breathing body was blasphemy enough. No one was supposed to defy Death once their number was called. And yet, the tortured-looking man with the soulful eyes had done just that.

Before she could realize what she was doing, she felt herself floating to the ground below, her robes billowing softly around her. Her mind blank, she floated just inches above the ground, tracing his steps with invisible ones of her own. This was stupid, she knew. Stupid and foolish, to get more involved with a charge than was necessary. But this _was_ necessary.

She was slow following the young man, taking her time and trying to collect her thoughts. She would certainly have some questions to answer when she got back to the Other Side. Difficult questions, she knew. Questions that really had no answer - and, if they did, she was certainly not privy to it.

Paige found herself focusing on him as he walked briskly through the town, following the two-toned man with little thought to where she was actually going. She watched as Seth raised a hand and hailed a cab, the yellow vehicle coming to a stop remarkably quickly considering the city they were in, and climbed in.

She could have followed him, but something told her that she might have an answer to his state of mind if she backtracked. Paige floated higher, the raindrops falling thickly through her ethereal form, and drifted back to his apartment. The image of his window was now permanently etched into her mind, so she had no trouble finding it and passing through the panes as easily as if they were opened.

Her feet pressed firmly on the carpet and she took in her surroundings. The place had the tell-tale signs of someone who had just given up. A mess, through and through, and though she had seen messier, there was just a certain kind of air about the place that signified something dark had been taking place for the longest time. As she moved from the bedroom to the other rooms of the apartment, she found an unmade bed, dirty dishes in the sink, clothes piled in the corner, old pizza boxes stacked next to the already full trash can. Every room was in complete darkness. The television was on, however, showing some crime show, but the sound was drowned out by the glaringly violent music playing on his radio.

Paige paid no attention to this - or, at least, she tried not to. The music brought forth something familiar to her, something that she had enjoyed before in her human life before it was cut short. The nostalgia was almost suffocating, and she felt the urge to scream and throw the offending item out of the window and to the rain-soaked concrete below.

As she scoped out the apartment, her eyes drifted to a picture on the small table by the couch. Now that she thought of it, she saw another picture of the same woman - this time accompanied by Seth himself - on the nightstand beside his bed. The woman was beautiful, that much was certain, with hair the color of cornsilk and a smile brighter than most, in her arms were a bouquet of sunflowers and the blue of her sundress brought out her eyes. And, as far as Paige could tell, there was no other evidence of a woman's touch in the place, other than the decorative pillows on the couch or the dustruffle on the bed.

Something like despair clutched at where Paige's heart should have been, and she whispered, "_Roman_."

The word cut through the barriers between the Living World and the Other Side, reaching the other Reaper in no time flat. It was a little gift the Reapers shared, being able to call upon help in times of need. If this wasn't a time of need, then Paige wasn't sure what was.

Roman materialized beside her, his presence automatically felt. Paige did not turn to him, did not hide in his chest like she so wanted. She stood, tall and straight and serious, like a statue that had seen so many things throughout its existance, but never something like this. Never something this pivotal.

"What is it, baby girl?" Roman's voice addressed her after a while, concerned.

Paige didn't know how to address the situation. Every time she tried, her voice seemed to stick in her throat. It was odd for her, a completely uncharacteristic action for someone so sure of herself, for someone so...

_Detached..._ the word floated across her mind, unbidden, like someone hissing a horrible secret.

Roman's large, warm hand pressed against her shoulder. Paige neither leaned into his touch nor shrugged it off, content to let him comfort her in his own way. She took a deep breath, never taking her eyes from woman in the picture, and said the words that she hadn't wanted to believe.

"He's alive, Roman," she said, her voice quiet but strong. She had never not been strong - at least, not since her death. "He's still alive, and I don't know what to do."

"What?" Roman stated, his voice shocked despite his best attempts to sound nonchalant. "How..."

"I don't _know_."

"Well," he said, "that's kind of a pickle."

Paige snorted out a laugh, something she had forgotten she was capable of in the past few minutes. "_Kind of_," she mimicked. "Brilliant wording there, Reigns. Absolutely brilliant."

A smile split his face. There it was, the most comforting thing she could see at the moment. It put her heart at ease, to see her best friend looking so completely comfortable in such a bizarre situation. He looked as if he didn't feel the sense of dread that encompassed her the moment Seth Rollins dropped the gun - and she had no reason why that dread was necessary.

"I mean, it is already known," Roman said, his voice dropping a bit, his eyes shooting upward. "Everything is known up there."

Paige nodded, her head suddenly feeling heavy. "For some reason, I'm exhausted," she commented. "I haven't felt exhausted in decades."

"We'll figure it out," Roman said, his voice calm and confident and somehow soothing. He always knew what to say to ease her mind, and this time was no exception. If he believed in something, it was hard not to believe with him. He was that earnest, he was that good, and it was odd how he managed to be caught up in this business, if it could be called that.

"Yeah," she agreed, though she hardly felt it. "Yeah, we will."

Outside, the rain began to ease before it finally stopped altogether.

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_**End Chapter Two. **_


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